A JOURNEY TO LONDON.
Very slowly, very monotonously went life at Thetford Towers. The only
noticable change and that my lady went rather more into society, and a
greater number of visitors came to the manor. There had been a
children's party on the occasion of Sir Rupert's eighth birthday, and
Mrs. Weymore had played for the little people to dance; and my lady had
cast off her chronic gloom, had been handsome and happy as of old. There
had been a dinner-party later--an imprecedented event now at Thetford
Towers; and the weeds, worn so long, had been discarded, and in diamonds
and black velvet Lady Ada Thetford had been beautiful, and stately, and
gracious, as a young queen. No one knew the reason of the sudden change,
but they accepted the fact just as they found it, and set it down,
perhaps, to woman's caprice.
So slowly the summer passed: autumn came and went, and it was December,
and the ninth anniversary of Sir Noel's death.
A gloomy day--wet, and wild, and windy. The wind, sweeping over the
angry sea, surged and roared through the skeleton trees; the rain lashed
the windows in rattling gusts; and the leaden sky hung low and frowning
over the drenched and dreary earth. A dismal day--very like that other,
nine years ago, that had been Sir Noel's last.
In Lady Thetford's boudoir a bright-red coal fire blazed. Pale-blue
curtains of satin damask shut out the wintry prospect, and the softest
and richest of foreign carpets hushed every footfall. Before the fire,
on a little table, my lady's breakfast temptingly stood; the silver, old
and quaint; the rare antique porcelain sparkling in the ruddy firelight.
An easy chair, carved and gilded, and cushioned in azure velvet, stood
by the table; and near my lady's plate lay the letters and papers the
morning's mail had brought.
A toy of a clock on the low marble mantle chimed musically ten as my
lady entered. In her dainty morning negligée, with her dark hair
rippling and falling low on her neck, she looked very young, and fair,
and graceful. Behind her came her maid, a blooming English girl, who
took off the cover and poured out my lady's chocolate.
Lady Thetford sank languidly into the azure velvet depths of her
_fautenuil_, and took up her letters. There were three--one a note from
her man of business; one an invitation to a dinner-party; and the third,
a big official-looking document, with a huge seal, and no end of
postmarks. The languid eyes suddenly lighted; the pale cheeks flushed as
she took it eagerly up. It was a letter from India from Capt. Everard.
Lady Thetford sipped her chocolate, and read her letter leisurely, with
her slippered feet on the shining fender. It was a long letter, and she
read it over slowly twice, three times, before she laid it down. She
finished her breakfast, motioned her maid to remove the service, and
lying back in her chair, with her deep, dark eyes fixed dreamily on the
fire, she fell into a reverie of other days far gone. The lover of her
girlhood came back to her from over the sea. He was lying at her feet
once more in the long summer days, under the waving trees of her
girlhood's home. Ah, how happy! how happy she had been in those by-gone
days, before Sir Noel Thetford had come, with his wealth and his title,
to tempt her from her love and truth.
Eleven struck, twelve from the musical clock on the mantle, and still my
lady sat living in the past. Outside the wintry storm raged on; the rain
clamored against the curtained glass, and the wind worried the trees.
With a long sigh my lady awoke from her dream, and mechanically took up
the _Times_ newspaper--the first of the little heap.
"Vain! vain!" she thought, dreamily; "worse than vain those dreams now.
With my own hand I threw back the heart that loved me; of my own free
will I resigned the man I loved. And now the old love, that I thought
would die in the splendor of my new life, is stronger than ever--and it
is nine years too late."
She tried to wrench her thoughts away and fix them on her newspaper. In
vain! her eyes wandered aimlessly over the closely-printed columns--her
mind was in India with Capt. Everard. All at once she started, uttered a
sudden, sharp cry, and grasped the paper with dilated eyes and whitening
cheeks. At the top of a column of "personal" advertisements was one
which her strained eyes literally devoured.
"If Mr. Vyking, who ten years ago left a male infant in charge
of Mrs. Martha Brand, wishes to keep that child out of the
work-house, he will call, within the next five days, at No. 17
Wadington Street, Lambeth."
Again and again, and again Lady Thetford read this apparently
uninteresting advertisement. Slowly the paper dropped into her lap, and
she sat staring blankly into the fire.
"At last!" she thought, "at last it has come. I fancied all danger was
over--the death, perhaps, had forestalled me; and now, after all these
years, I am summoned to keep my broken promise!"
The hue of death had settled on her face; she sat cold and rigid,
staring with that blank, fixed gaze into the fire. Ceaselessly beat the
rain; wilder grew the December day; steadily the moments wore on, and
still she sat in that fixed trance. The armula clock struck two--the
sound aroused her at last.
"I must!" she said, setting her teeth. "I will! My boy shall not lose
his birthright, come what may!"
She rose and rang the bell--very pale, but icily calm. Her maid answered
the summons.
"Eliza," my lady asked, "at what hour does the afternoon train leave St.
Gosport for London!"
Eliza stared--did not know, but would ascertain. In five minutes she was
back.
"At half-past three, my lady; and another at seven."
Lady Thetford glanced at the clock--it was a quarter past two.
"Tell William to have the carriage at the door at a quarter past three;
and do you pack my dressing case, and the few things I shall need for
two or three days' absence. I am going to London."
Eliza stood for a moment quite petrified. In all the nine years of her
service under my lady, no such order as this had ever been received. To
go to London at a moment's notice--my lady, who rarely went beyond her
own park gates! Turning away, not quite certain that her ears had not
deceived her, my lady's voice arrested her.
"Send Mrs. Weymore to me; and do you lose no time in packing up."
Eliza departed. Mrs. Weymore appeared. My lady had some instructions to
give concerning the children during her absence. Then the governess was
dismissed, and she was again alone.
Through the wind and rain of the wintry storm, Lady Thetford was driven
to the station, in time to catch the three-fifty train to the
metropolis. She went unattended; with no message to any one, only saying
she would be back in three days at the furthest.
In that dull household, where so few events ever disturbed the stagnant
quiet, this sudden journey produced an indescribable sensation. What
could have taken my lady to London at a moment's notice? Some urgent
reason it must have been to force her out of the gloomy seclusion in
which she had buried herself since her husband's death. But, discuss it
as they might, they could come no nearer the heart of the mystery.